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April 22, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:34:44

HELP I TORTURED MY SISTER! Freedomain Call In

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	Hi, Stefan.
	I'm a 31-year-old man who's recently found the show four months ago.
	Philosophy has taken a fire to my heart.
	I've been ravenously devouring your books and call-in shows and podcasts in the past months.
	I'm emerging from a very long period of isolation, and I need help navigating this life transition.
	I'm starting from a point of zero-quality relationships, and I need to cross the desert.
	I've confronted my parents about my childhood.
	This confrontation not only confirmed their nature as abusers to me, but it engendered a neurological shift in me where I feel more confident, competent, and action-oriented than I've ever felt in my life.
	I've confronted my parents, moved out of their house, and am taking steps to further my career.
	Before, I was burning time with hedonism.
	I had no goal.
	Subconsciously, I didn't want a marriage like my parents or for my future children to have my childhood, so I avoided dating entirely in my 20s.
	When I first moved out in my early 20s, I fell into drug addiction and isolation.
	I returned to live with my parents in a sort of prodigal son's sort of way in my late 20s.
	I've just moved out again, and I don't have another decade to waste.
	I want love and a family.
	In this most critical period of my life, I need guidance.
	Right. Well, I'm obviously thrilled and happy to help as far as that goes.
	So tell me a little bit about your childhood, how that all went there.
	Yeah, so I thought it would be good to go into a little bit of history.
	My parents and how they met into my childhood?
	Yeah, it's your story.
	Whatever you want to tell, it's fine with me.
	Okay. So, I'll start with my dad.
	My dad's father was an alcoholic who basically...
	My dad's mother and father got divorced probably when he was six or so.
	His dad basically hardly ever saw him.
	My dad describes him as just a drunk.
	My dad's mom, she was married three times throughout my dad's childhood.
	He was kind of a latchkey kid.
	He had one full sister and two half-sisters.
	From what he kind of describes, he was sort of a bit sadistic towards his little sisters.
	He would have these creative ways to either humiliate them or straight up injure them.
	I remember a story of him.
	He took this lead, I don't know, something, and hung it from the string on a banister and then swung it out and it hit my aunt in the...
	In the face.
	And this is kind of like a ha-ha, funny story that they like to tell.
	Another time, I think when he was a teenager, he had this really loud car.
	And he would, it was kind of a beater, and so he would drive up to the high school with her in it, and she was very, I think, popular at the school.
	She was younger than him.
	And he kind of read the engine and sort of, like, embarrassed her a lot.
	So, anyway, so he kind of has this sadistic streak, and then in his 20s, from what he's...
	Well, sorry to interrupt.
	I'm sorry to interrupt your story.
	I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.
	Are you saying that he has this sadistic streak like it's like he has an arm, or he indulged his sadistic streak, but it could have been different?
	Oh, he indulged it, yeah.
	Okay, so he didn't have it, he indulged it.
	Yeah, you're right.
	And I wasn't sure, and I don't mean to nitpick, I just wasn't sure what your philosophy of moral responsibility was.
	Like, if you just have sadism, then you're not responsible because, you know, it's just a brain thing.
	Or if he had a tendency towards sadism that he decided to indulge, obviously that made things worse, and so on.
	Okay, just checking.
	So, sorry to interrupt, I just, go ahead.
	No, I definitely agree with the latter, and it's a good catch of my language, I guess.
	So in his 20s, he kind of describes to me that he basically played softball and went to bars and kind of lived with roommates, and he worked in construction and didn't make much money,
	didn't save much until his early 30s.
	Until he met my mom.
	I guess I was going to go to my mom.
	Do you have any questions?
	No, not in particular.
	I guess you'll get into what your mom found attractive about him, because that's always kind of the mystery to me.
	It's like, okay, so this guy's obviously kind of a loser and not a provider and a hedonist or whatever you want to call him.
	He's got sadistic streaks.
	And all of that.
	So why the hell would your mother marry him?
	It's always a great mystery to me.
	And so was he tall and good-looking?
	Was he really charming?
	What was his plus?
	His great value that he provides is that he's like, I don't know, I would say like 98th percentile, very, very handy.
	Maybe handy is not as grand of a word as it should be.
	He can take basically any run-down house, he can probably take it and flip it into, like, by himself, like, an amazing house within, I don't know, four to five months.
	Oh, because he did all the construction stuff, right?
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	Okay, so, but that's not enough to marry someone.
	You hire someone like that, you know?
	Like, I have a good dentist.
	I pay her to be my dentist.
	I don't marry her to get free dentistry.
	Yeah, to be honest, it's kind of a mystery to me.
	Well, have you seen pictures of your dad when he was younger?
	Yeah, he's very good-looking.
	Oh, okay, so it's not that much of a mystery, right?
	He's just really good-looking, and he's handy, and I assume he's athletic because he did manual labor and played baseball, so he's got some bods, and he's got great looks, and he's handy.
	Okay, so his...
	I was just going to say his package, though I get that that has two meanings.
	But his deal was that he was good-looking.
	Now, what about his language skills, his charisma, sense of humor, anything like that?
	He's very funny.
	He's fairly charismatic, yeah.
	Okay. Got it.
	Got it.
	Okay. So, do you know what his dating history was like in his 20s?
	Did he...
	Sleep around?
	What happened with him?
	I don't know.
	He never says much about it.
	He's always very vague.
	Okay. Yeah.
	Okay. Just wondering.
	All right.
	Okay. But nothing long term, I don't think.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, listen, I mean, guys who play baseball, was he like, when you say played baseball, was he like sort of semi-pro league or pick up baseball games or what?
	He played a lot of softball.
	Oh, okay.
	So just like softball leagues where you just go out and drink afterwards, I assume.
	Yeah, gay baseball.
	Got it.
	Okay. Yeah.
	All right.
	So he meets your mom in his early 30s.
	And how old was she?
	She was nine years younger than him.
	Uh-huh.
	Okay. Yeah.
	I'm guessing he kept his hair?
	Yes. Yeah.
	That gives you access to immature women.
	Okay. Got it.
	Yeah. So my mom, I guess she grew up on a farm.
	And I think, from what I gather, she had a pretty sheltered kind of life in that it was sheltered from secularism in that her family is a pretty fundamental Christian.
	And she went to a private Christian school.
	Her father was a teacher at that school.
	And I guess one curious thing that was a descriptor of my mother as a young child, which I don't exactly know what this means, but maybe you can shed some light on it, is that she was described as always a little adult.
	So, I don't know.
	It was like...
	Oh, such a mature young lady.
	Oh, she's just an old soul.
	No, she's traumatized and she's not allowed to have a childhood because she's got insane, irresponsible parents around.
	That would be my assumption.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	So her dad, my mother's dad, was beaten pretty severely by his stepdad.
	And throughout my entire life, he's been extremely depressive.
	He's been on every SSRI known to man.
	I don't think he's, I don't think, I don't know for sure, but I don't think he's tried therapy.
	So he tries all these pharmaceutical and, I don't know, even that thing where it shocks your head.
	Yeah, electric therapy, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, to cure his depression.
	But he's always kind of been...
	I'm sorry, who was this again?
	This is my mom's dad.
	Mom's dad.
	Okay, got it.
	Yeah. And so he's always been kind of...
	I think he retired from his job as a teacher at the private school pretty early.
	And so for my life, he's kind of just been struggling with depression probably as a result of this unresolved trauma in his childhood.
	No, no, no.
	Okay. No.
	No, no, not because of that.
	Not because of that.
	Not because of that.
	So... Okay.
	Let's say that he had some physical injury from being hit as a child, right?
	He had some crooked arm or something like that.
	And now let's say it could be fixed, but it would be painful to fix, right?
	They maybe have to re-break it or whatever it is, right?
	So then he struggles through life.
	If you say, ah, well, you see, he has this crooked arm because he was beaten as a child.
	Nope. He has this crooked arm because he failed to fix it as an adult.
	you.
	I 100% agree with that.
	I don't...
	Yeah. Like this because of past.
	Now, I get that with some physical things.
	Some guy gets his arm bitten off by a shark.
	Yeah, he's got no arm because his arm got bitten off by a shark.
	But we're talking about moral matters here.
	So, her father was, your mother's father was, you know, mistreated as a child.
	And as far as you know, he didn't do therapy.
	He just ran to pills and electroshock therapy.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Okay. And did it work?
	No. He's totally fried.
	I'm sorry, say again?
	He's totally fried.
	Like, he can hardly function.
	He's on his way out right now.
	Okay, so yeah, I just want to be clear.
	It's not because of childhood trauma.
	It's because of a failure.
	Now, I'm not saying that, you know, electroshock therapy and these pills things, I mean, I have my skepticisms.
	I'm not saying he failed there because he did these things.
	I don't know.
	But what I will say is that if they didn't work, he should have tried something else and he didn't, right?
	Yeah. So to me, and to me, I'll just tell you my sort of particular thoughts and you can see if this is relevant to your situation because I'm sort of really trying to focus on the solitary life.
	So to me, if you have, let's say, would you say he was depressed or something like that?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So if you're depressed, And you decide to have a wife and kids, you got to fix your depression.
	And you have to do whatever it takes to fix your depression.
	Why? Because, especially if you have kids, you've now created people in your life who your depression affects and they never chose to be there.
	So you become a father or a mother, you absolutely have to do whatever it takes.
	And my understanding, again, I'm no therapist, right?
	But my understanding is like some cognitive behavioral therapy is pretty good.
	I think philosophy can be pretty good because sometimes depression has a moral basis, I think, quite often.
	But to me, it is self-indulgent to have something like this, not do everything in your power to fix it.
	If you choose to have a wife and kids, you have to get better.
	Now, again, maybe there's some people who can't and, you know, whatever.
	So I'm not saying this is, you know, it's hard to say 100% in these matters and you never find out for sure because there's no physical marker that says it's impossible to fix your depression, at least as far as I know.
	So there's a kind of self-indulgence to this.
	Now, one of the things that depressed people, it's kind of hard to shake them by shoulders and tell them to snap the hell out of it and get things fixed.
	Because depression, you know, there's a fragility and to some degree a sort of aura of weakness and victimhood about it and so on.
	But I find that to the degree that it is that, there's manipulation involved.
	Yeah, that's a really good point.
	I never thought about it that way.
	But you are right that it's really incumbent on you if you have depression and then you have children.
	You've got to fix it.
	Well, don't have children until you fix the depression.
	Yeah. And if you look up, you know, let's do this live, baby, because I am an edgelord of typing.
	But if you look up, let's see here.
	Let's see.
	Best cures for depression, right?
	Best cures for depression.
	And let's see here.
	Treatment and management.
	So, yeah, it's going to be really, really tough.
	But my understanding is that CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT is pretty, pretty solid as far.
	Yeah, so cognitive behavioral therapy is highly effective for treating depression and so on, right?
	So you would look up, you say, oh, you know, I want to have kids, but man, I'm depressed.
	So, I gotta sort this out.
	And you would do a search, right?
	And, you know, whether he was older, of course, I get.
	Maybe this is all pre-internet.
	But, you know, you go to the library and you look up depression and you take responsibility for this stuff.
	And, look, I have sympathy with people who are depressed, obviously.
	It's a difficult state of mind and all of that.
	But you have to...
	You have to sort that out before you have kids, because otherwise you really can't be a very good parent.
	And this is not just depression, it's anxiety or whatever is going on for people, but you need to sort this out before you bring kids into your life, because you have to be healthy before, or as healthy as you can be before you have kids.
	So I feel a certain amount of irritation at some of the self-indulgence of Well, it's not working.
	I'll just keep doing the stuff that doesn't work, and my kids will just find a way to deal with it.
	It's like, well, that's not fair.
	Anyway, so, sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, well, one thing I just thought of that I wanted to add is that I've definitely felt depressed at points in my life, and I felt there's an aspect of self-indulgence where you can kind of wallow in it and sort of create a feedback loop of being sad and that kind of thing,
	that kind of indulgence.
	There is, and, you know, I'm not saying, obviously, neither of us are saying that everyone who's depressed is self-indulgent, but there can be an addiction to it, an identity, I am depressed.
	And then, of course, what happens is that the longer you're depressed, the more you end up with people in your life who are depressed.
	And it becomes a sort of feedback loop, human condition stuff, you know, because the enthusiastic positive people will kind of run out of steam.
	With you fairly quickly, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
	I mean, if you want to get a bunch of stuff done in your life, you just kind of have to press people around you because they'll just siphon off your energy.
	Well, my grandpa's definitely, yeah, he's a total siphon.
	Right, right.
	Okay. So, sorry, I know we spent a lot of time on that, but I thought it was important.
	Okay, so...
	Tell me a little bit more about your mother's...
	I think we were just on your mother's upbringing.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I think it was that thing where she was always quote-unquote an adult.
	So there's some aspect of child abuse there, obviously.
	And then she was very bossy, apparently.
	She had two little brothers.
	And she was kind of a bookworm.
	She has this story about being in school and reading a book in math class and getting in trouble.
	And she's like, oh, that's like the time I got in trouble was for reading a book.
	And so her mother, my grandma, was a nurse.
	And so my mom also became a nurse.
	Oh, I hate dysfunctionalness.
	I've never heard it.
	Let me just write it down.
	Breaking of all stereotypes.
	All right.
	And so she moved a couple hours away to a different city in her early 20s to a job away from where she grew up.
	And she basically met my dad on that job.
	While she was a nurse?
	Yes. Okay.
	And so my parents...
	Dated for maybe a year and a half and got married and had me maybe a year later.
	And so my upbringing...
	I guess...
	So I have two little sisters.
	So one two years younger than me.
	The other one five years younger than me.
	And... What I remember most about my young childhood with my little sister is that we were...
	I remember, and I know it's...
	There's no...
	There's never no...
	Sorry. There's never a reason to...
	Okay, you're going to have to get out of whatever strange Mobius loop you're in.
	Get on with the story because I'm not sure where we are.
	Okay, you got sisters?
	What then?
	Okay, so my little sister, I hated her when we were little kids.
	And I know that's irrational to...
	Like a two-year-old.
	But I hated her.
	So the way we were disciplined is we were hit with a wooden spoon.
	By who?
	By my mother.
	By both.
	Okay, both your parents' wooden spoon.
	Yes. And I remember she would...
	My little sister would lie about me and get me in trouble to be hit.
	And I remember that...
	Sorry, you're going to say something?
	No, go ahead.
	Okay. And so there's like this dislike, and so what I've come to think is that probably it's like my parents playing the kind of a divide and conquer thing.
	And so...
	Sorry, there's a bit of a squeaking that's coming from your side of things?
	It's a bird that's outside my window.
	Oh, that's fine.
	You can't control it.
	I was like, does my brain need oiling?
	I wasn't sure.
	I can mute while you're talking.
	No, no, no.
	Honestly, don't worry about that.
	That's totally fine.
	I just wanted to know if it was under control.
	So, some sort of divide and conquer thing, but I'm still not sure why you hated your two-year-old sister.
	I remember I would Hit her when we were very young.
	So she was how old and you were how old?
	Probably like four and two, or five and three, six and four.
	So you would hit her?
	And tell me, what would you do?
	I guess I would bring her into physical submission.
	I don't exactly remember too much, but I remember we would have...
	No, you wouldn't have fights.
	She's two.
	Yeah. Come on.
	She's two.
	It could have been slightly older.
	I'm just going by what you told me, man.
	Right, right.
	Well, can I revise that?
	Okay, so you would attack her because she's two.
	Yes. Okay, and you would hit her?
	Yes. Okay.
	I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
	I'm just trying to understand the situation here.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I would physically, I guess, restrain her or hit her.
	And I know I got in trouble.
	I know it's a long time ago, but on what basis or on what grounds?
	For what purpose or reason?
	I think to get her to shut up.
	To get her to shut up.
	And why was it important that she shut up?
	I guess maybe kind of this tag-along kind of thing.
	Sorry, tag-along is different from shut up.
	I'm just trying to follow.
	Maybe I felt she was coming too close to me.
	I'm fogging up pretty hard here.
	I mean, okay, when did you stop hitting her?
	I stopped hitting her probably at the age of five or six.
	When you were five or six?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Got it.
	Yeah, so that's pretty hard to remember, the causality.
	But you were angry or annoyed with her, and you hit her and physically controlled or restrained her, is that right?
	Correct. Do you mean, like, sit on her or hold her down or something like that?
	What I remember most is, like, holding her arm back.
	Holding her arm back.
	Like, grabbing her, like, upper arm.
	Mm-hmm.
	And do you have any more positive or affectionate...
	Memories with your sister?
	Throughout my childhood, I always really, really disliked her.
	More recently, as adults, I have some positive things, but our relationship's not good now.
	And what, you said you had two siblings, right?
	Yeah. And so this, your closest sibling is your youngest sister, and who else?
	Another sister five years younger.
	Okay, and what was your relationship like with her?
	It was very good, actually.
	Me and her always considered the middle sister to be kind of the favorite, and so I guess we kind of bullied her.
	Yeah, we would say actually pretty nasty things.
	We would say she was adopted.
	Because me and my...
	Holy crap, you'd tell her she was adopted?
	Yeah. Oh, God.
	Why am I the only one feeling anything about this?
	This is appalling.
	You're right.
	It's just a little kid.
	You're supposed to protect your sister.
	Yeah. Do you feel anything about it?
	I feel like a guilt in my stomach right now.
	Tell me a little bit about that, because I'm not getting that read in terms of you telling the story.
	I always find it kind of disconcerting when people are like, yeah, I tortured animals, and then I did this.
	I'm not saying you're being that glib, but the disconnect between what you're saying and the emotions is significant.
	Right. Let me think for a sec.
	I guess, sort of the way I've processed this is that I was a child, and so I had limited free will, and I sort of blame my parents.
	The mechanics of it, logically, to me has to be that they set us against each other.
	Okay, so how did they, sorry, if I missed this earlier, how did they set you against each other?
	I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to understand the mechanics.
	I think my mom would show way more affection towards my sister.
	There was a divide and conquer thing where we would tell on each other.
	And tried to get the other one hit with the spoon.
	This is all the siblings, or just you versus your middle sibling?
	Mostly me versus my middle sibling.
	Okay, so if you weren't hitting her or pinning her down yourself, you were trying to get her hit by your mother with an implement, or your father?
	I think it was probably 70% her trying to get me hit and maybe 30% the other way around.
	Right. Okay.
	Well, I mean, she's got no physical strength relative to you, right?
	It's not even close to an equal fight.
	You're right.
	a boy and you're two years older, right?
	Yeah. All right.
	So you feel that because your mother showed more affection towards your middle sister that this was the cause of your violence towards your sister.
	I hypothesize that there's some other dynamic going on there.
	Sorry, I'm just trying to confirm your thesis.
	Is your thesis, because I asked the Divide and Conquer, I said, what were the mechanics?
	You said, well, my mother showed affection to my sister.
	Right, correct, yes.
	Okay, do you think that's causal?
	I mean, do you think that...
	I mean, if your mother had something like, well, if, you know, some weird Sophie's Choice thing going on, if your mother said, well, all of the children will be punished for anyone who does anything wrong, and one of the things you can do wrong is be too loud,
	right? So you're going to get beaten if your sister is too loud.
	Then you might want to use force to control your sister, because you're all going to get beaten.
	If she's too loud.
	Does that sort of make sense?
	Sorry, can you repeat that?
	Sure. So if your mother says to you, kids, listen, if any one of you does anything wrong, you're all going to get beaten.
	And one of the things that you can do wrong is be too loud, because you said that your middle sister was too loud at times, right?
	Yeah. So if your middle sister is too loud, you're all going to get beaten.
	So then, out of fear of getting beaten, you would try and control your sister's noise.
	Does that make sense?
	That makes sense.
	Okay. So that's not what was happening, though.
	And I could understand that as a causality.
	And maybe I'm just missing something here, so forgive me if I'm slow to catch on.
	But I could understand that as a causality or something like that, collective punishment and so on, right?
	more affection to your sister, I'm not sure how that is directly causal to being violent towards your sister.
	All right.
	you.
	Yeah, it's not.
	Well, it could also be the case, because I know the cause and effect when you're very young is tough, right?
	So it could also be the case that because she was being so picked on by her siblings that your mother felt that she had to show her extra affection as a result of that, to make up for that.
	No, that's certainly plausible.
	Yeah, I mean, I could definitely see that.
	The mechanics of it have never been super clear to me, and I do remember, I was going to say, that there was some, there was definitely, even at that very young age, there was definitely an indulgence in the violence,
	for sure.
	Well, did you do it when people were over, and did you do it, like, was it out of your control?
	Did you do it at the mall?
	Did you do it at school where you could get in trouble?
	Or was it like sort of secret stuff?
	No, it was always, I remember it was always when my parents weren't in the room is when it would happen.
	No, not when it would happen.
	When I would do that.
	When you would do it.
	Okay, so you were perfectly able to control your behavior because you never did it when you could get in trouble.
	Yes. Okay, that's like the, you know, the pinch someone under the table kind of thing, right?
	Okay, so the self-indulgence is you want to do it, you're capable of not doing it, but you let yourself do it.
	And that's the big question.
	And look, I know you're four, five, six years old, so I understand that we're not holding you in the adult court of moral law, but what do you think was the purpose?
	And I don't have an answer to this, right?
	I'm genuinely curious.
	What do you think the purpose was?
	Of this aggression or physical or mental torture or both?
	It's sadism.
	Well, but that's not really, that's just giving it a description.
	Okay. What's the purpose or what were you trying to achieve?
	So I guess why would I derive pleasure out of hurting?
	Well, did you derive pleasure?
	I mean, was that the feeling?
	Yeah. Okay, so it made you feel good, and help me understand that
	or that experience.
	playing it in my head right now.
	Thank you.
	Was it sometimes when she was having fun or in some sort of more positive mood that you would want to attack her in this way, or was there some...
	A trigger that would make this more likely?
	I don't remember.
	I guess I can tell you another story from when I was older that's kind of in the same vein.
	I have a bunch of younger cousins.
	I'm probably the oldest cousin or close to it.
	We would play At my grandma's house, I was probably, what age was I?
	Pretty old, like 12 to 14. And what I would do to some of them is, there is this little closet space.
	Sorry, due to some of your cousins?
	Yes, to my cousins.
	And they would be younger?
	They would be younger.
	They would be from the ages of...
	Five to ten.
	Okay, and you're 13, 14, and so what would you do?
	And so there's this little, it was kind of like a little play place, but simultaneously a little crawl space under the stairs.
	Yeah, I know the kind.
	There was one in my aunt's place too.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It was pretty cool, but I would lock them in it.
	And we would kind of play jail, but it was pretty like...
	They were upset.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It wasn't, you know, innocent play or whatever.
	Yeah, it was bullying.
	They're going stronger, you can stuff them in and lock them in, right?
	Yep. Sit in front of the door.
	Yeah. And what was the purpose of that?
	I mean, I assume that gave you some sort of pleasure, right?
	Yeah, just power, I guess.
	Well, power doesn't explain much.
	These are all just, like, labels.
	Okay. I mean, because you can have...
	You can have power over yourself and get pleasure out of that, right?
	Which is, I'm going to resist my sadistic impulses.
	I have power over myself.
	So power doesn't explain much, right?
	Okay. And I'm sorry to be such an egg.
	I'm just genuinely trying to understand your emotional process and experience of this.
	What's the plus?
	What does it get you?
	And I'm not saying it doesn't get you anything.
	I'm just trying to follow your...
	And it's individual.
	I could some sort of generic cruelty thing, but it's important to figure out your experience of this.
	Yeah, I mean, it was fun.
	It was...
	Maybe you can ask another question?
	Sure. So the kids are crying, and they're maybe calling out or screaming out to get out, right?
	Yeah. And maybe some of them are having, I don't know, claustrophobia or some sort of panic attack or something like that.
	And that's a positive experience for you, right?
	If it got to that point, I would let them out.
	Okay, so at some point before that, they're distressed and want to get out, but they're not screaming and panicking yet.
	Right. Okay.
	So that part then, the pre-panic but upset, that's a positive experience for you.
	Um...
	Yeah, it was.
	Yeah, and again, I'm not judging or criticizing.
	I'm genuinely like, nothing human is alien to me.
	I'm just trying to figure out the mechanics of it.
	Yeah. So what is the feeling there?
	What is the plus?
	It's like a...
	It's like a grim satisfaction, or like a dark pleasure.
	Like, uh...
	I know it's not...
	No, I get that, but putting the word dark in front of pleasure doesn't explain it very much.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's X, but dark X!
	It's like, okay, but yes, but what is the pleasure?
	I don't know, can you help me out?
	I'm totally, I'm totally walled off.
	Yeah, it's tough to figure out.
	So when you and your sister would tell your middle sister that she was adopted, she would cry or be upset?
	She wouldn't believe us.
	It was always kind of a joke.
	It was never like we forged fake adoption papers, but it was always kind of a needling.
	Gaslight-y kind of thing.
	I'll mention something else too, is that a lot of the times that I got in trouble, I guess it was for verbal abuse actually.
	So I remember a big mantra from my mom is like, don't cut people down, don't cut down.
	So I guess, not I guess, but I would sort of cut down or insult my sister.
	This was around the same age.
	As we were talking about before, very young.
	So I'm not exactly sure.
	What would you say to her?
	Yeah, I was just going to say, I can't exactly remember.
	Not exactly, but I can't remember what I would say.
	It would be insulting.
	I think I would call her fat.
	I would call her probably stupid.
	Okay. Yeah.
	And what age did you diminish your...
	Attacks on your middle sister?
	When did that sort of die down?
	The overt attacks, like the hitting and the verbal abuse, probably like five or six.
	No, I know that, but I remember that.
	But in terms of like the verbal stuff or the put-downs or the...
	Probably when she got big enough to fight back.
	Like probably when I was...
	It wasn't as severe as when we were young, but it continued until at least teenage years.
	Which is a long stretch of years, right?
	We've got six years in there, right?
	So when in your teenage years?
	I would say I was 14, she was 12. Right.
	I'm gonna go out on a limb here.
	Could be complete nonsense.
	Tell me if it makes anything, if it makes any sense to you.
	So, to me, sadism is a kind of benevolence.
	Really? Sadism is a kind of benevolence.
	So, for instance, if you lived in Africa in the bush, in the...
	In the grasslands or something, and your kids were unprotected at night, right?
	Would it be a kindness to pretend to be a predator growling and creeping up on them?
	Maybe in a sense, because it could prepare them for a situation like that.
	Yeah, save their life, right?
	Yeah. So...
	To me, it's like being cruel to children or harming children or frightening children, if it protects them from a greater disaster, then, you know, children suffer if they want candy and you don't give them candy,
	but it's for the greater good, right?
	The longer-term good.
	Children who are overweight, if they have to eat less, they'll cry and be hungry and be upset, but it's for their own good, right?
	So suffering...
	For the sake of improvement, is something that is important in life, right?
	Yeah, I'm crying now.
	Right. So tell me what I'm saying and how you're feeling.
	I feel like I was protecting her.
	Right. And so then the question is, What are the predators you are protecting her from in your mind?
	It has to be my parents.
	Yeah, parents could be any cluster of adults, so to speak.
	Yeah, yeah.
	If that makes sense.
	Yeah. So, tell me, if this approach, that you're trying to toughen them up and harden them and warn them of predators, then tell me about the mechanics that might be occurring and what might be going on.
	Sorry, the mechanics in which situation?
	Well, let's...
	Let's talk about your sister, middle sister, and the kids under the stairs, right?
	Okay. So if we take the approach that you are trying to protect them, like an inoculation, right?
	Like when I was a kid, I got an inoculation against smallpox.
	It hurt.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But, you know, the argument, of course, is it hurts a whole lot less than getting smallpox, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So if you are trying to protect or inoculate...
	Your siblings, or let's say the kids under the stairs and your middle sister, what are you trying to protect or inoculate them from?
	You say, well, predators and so on, but let's dig more into it.
	What do you think you were trying to achieve in this potentially cruel-to-be-kind mechanic?
	Yeah. I guess I was trying to toughen them up to...
	To being needled at?
	To being what?
	Needled at?
	Needled at, okay.
	Like verbally?
	Well, no, sorry.
	It can't be that because you're doing it.
	Go on.
	Right, so if you're saying, well, I'm trying to protect you from being needled at or teased, well, you're already doing that.
	Right? So that would be like me cutting a kid saying, I'm trying to protect you from being cut.
	But you're already cutting them, right?
	So it's not that.
	So it has to be different than the thing I'm doing to them.
	Yeah, it has to be different than the thing you're doing.
	Because then that's like injecting me with smallpox saying, I'm trying to protect you from smallpox.
	It's like, I don't think you did that.
	So why would I lock them under the stairs?
	Not the why.
	It's what are you trying to protect them from?
	I mean, I have a vague thought, but I don't want to interfere with your...
	Thought process, though I get, of course, this is a difficult thing to process.
	To be honest, this is a total wall to me.
	So if you ever thought, that would be super valuable.
	Well, I can take a shot, if that makes sense.
	I can take a shot.
	So I think you found the kids who were the most naive and trusting, positive, open-hearted, and good-natured, and you said, kids!
	If you trust anyone, you're fucked!
	So I'm going to inure you, I'm going to make you immune to this stupid, doe-eyed fucking trust bullshit, because you're going to be fucked.
	Hey, kids, you should go into the closet.
	I locked you in.
	Hey, did you learn something about trust?
	Don't do it!
	Oh, are you coming to me with affection?
	I'm going to push you away.
	I'm going to hold you down.
	Oh, do you think these are your parents?
	No, you're just adopted.
	Ha ha.
	I think, and I obviously could be wrong, probably am, but I think it's got something to do with kids.
	If you bond, you're fucked.
	If you love, if you are open-hearted, if you trust, you're fucked.
	And I'm going to get you out of that mindset so you're not fucked.
	That just resonates a thousand percent.
	That pattern shows up in my life all the time.
	Well, I'm concerned that you isolate yourself because you feel like a virus.
	you.
	I don't know.
	I don't know if that's true.
	In the past, yeah, for sure.
	For sure.
	Okay, so what is it about trust and bond?
	I'll sort of give you an example that's sort of a cliche in movies.
	I don't know if you've ever seen any First World War movies.
	Maybe one or two.
	Yeah. Or it can be sort of any movie where there's, you know, significant combat.
	So there's usually two paradigms.
	So this is sort of in Platoon and so on.
	But you see this in the First World War movies a lot.
	You know, there's a clean-shaven, fresh-faced young guy who's just enthusiastic to fight.
	You know, and fight for the fatherland, fight for the motherland, and he just can't wait.
	And what always happens to that fresh-faced, apple-cheeked, beardless kid when the first combat comes along?
	He gets blown by a mortar.
	Oh, yeah, he gets the shit shot out of him.
	Like, in slow motion.
	Yeah. Right?
	If you trust, you're fucked.
	And so...
	If you have enthusiasm, positivity, and affection, and so on, right?
	Yeah. Then I think you probably perceive those kids to be in grave danger.
	You know, it's the old, what do you mean strangers have the best candy?
	That's not good.
	And if I have to pretend to kidnap you in a white van, So that you don't get kidnapped by a real pedophile, I'll do that.
	If I have to scare the shit out of you to keep you safe, I will do that.
	But whoever trusts gets fucked and is in grave danger.
	Trust is a poison, and if I have to slap it out of your hand ten times a day, I will do that.
	Yep, yep.
	Dang. Hey, kids, we're gonna play a fun game of Under the Stairs.
	Haha, hide-and-go-seek.
	You're locked.
	Okay, how did trust work out for your kids?
	Now you're frightened.
	Okay, well, before you get completely hysterical, I'll let you out.
	But I hope you learned an important lesson.
	Thank you.
	Do you seriously see where I'm coming from?
	Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
	I was thinking about this.
	So this pattern showed up in a relationship that I had when I was around 20. Basically, I didn't really like this girl that much, but she liked me a lot.
	And I took advantage of that and I had sex with her sometimes.
	And then, so I was going away to college, so at the end of the summer we had sex a few times, and then the entire semester passes, I come back and she contacts me, and it's like she waited all these three months just for me.
	And so I had sex with her a few more times, and then I was thinking, How can this girl, like, it's so dangerous for her to give up sex to someone who,
	like, I don't even like her.
	Like, what's going to happen to her?
	I don't know in the future.
	And I don't want her, this is my reasoning at the time, but I don't want her to feel bad.
	So what I'll do is I'll completely 100% ghost her.
	I'll block her on everything.
	And I did that.
	And so my theory at the time was, She would get mad at me instead of herself, and then she would learn to not give away her trust like that again.
	Right. So you're giving her an inoculation?
	Yep. Right.
	And it doesn't work.
	Well, I mean, let's not get into whether it works or not, because we're just looking at the mechanics, right?
	Now, what did you dislike about this young woman?
	Well, she wasn't pretty enough for me.
	I was, uh, in my teens and twenties, I wanted to date for vanity.
	Yes. And looking good.
	And was she overweight or just was not pretty in the face?
	She just wasn't, she was like pretty enough.
	Actually, she was fairly good looking, but just not, I wanted like a 95th percentile, like model girl, which is unrealistic for.
	My sort of market value.
	But I wanted that, and I would hold out hope that I would have that.
	And so that prevented me from any kind of significant bonding or anything like that.
	Sorry, that prevented what?
	It sort of eclipsed that desire to want a girlfriend that engenders...
	Envy and my friends sort of eclipsed any aspiration for a real relationship.
	Right. Okay.
	Got it.
	Got it.
	And how would you, you said your sexual market value, so how would you rank your own looks, sort of at one to ten scale?
	Between seven and eight.
	Okay. And are you, how old are you?
	31. 31. And what's your, just roughly, income a year?
	Nothing. Okay, what was your maximum income when you did work?
	$30,000.
	Okay, so you can't provide, really, for a family, right?
	Correct. Okay, got it.
	And did you ever find a way through your Blockfest?
	Say that again?
	Did the young woman that you blocked, did she ever find a way to contact you?
	I remember a week after she broke my wind wiper on my car.
	You saw her do that?
	I knew it was her.
	There's another...
	Well, I'm pretty sure it was her.
	And is that because she had shown these kinds of aggressive tendencies before?
	She had a bad friend.
	I mean, I guess that doesn't give an excuse.
	She had a bad boyfriend too, but okay, she had a bad friend.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, and so I think the friend is kind of a hyper-feminist type, and I don't know.
	She was bad news.
	I knew the other friend.
	I knew both of them from school.
	Anyway, I think my theory, I forget why this is my theory, but my theory is that they both drove up and she broke.
	Got it.
	Okay, so what do you think your lesson was, as far as trust goes, that trust is death?
	That relying on others, trusting others, is like death, to the point where trust is such a predator that you have to inoculate children against this predator by continually betraying their trust.
	What was your experience with trust, do you think, that made it so deadly?
	Well, the first thing that comes to mind, and this doesn't really make chronological sense, but I'll just say it anyway, is in elementary school, I think there's this elementary school kind of thing where you have little,
	I don't know, seven-year-old, six-year-old crushes, and the kids kind of rate the, I guess, attractiveness of their other classmates, and you have a crush on so-and-so.
	So I divulged to my little sister, the one that's two years younger, who I had crushes on.
	And she went and told my whole class.
	But that chronologically doesn't make sense to me because it would have to be before, because I was inoculating her against that.
	So it would have to be before in toddlerhood or infancy.
	Well, and that could also just be a setup for you to get.
	To punish her.
	True, yeah.
	It's a big secret, don't tell anyone!
	And then she goes and tells people and you get to punish her.
	Okay, so I know this may of course be pre-verbal, it may be pre-memory, but with regards to trust, do you ever remember trusting or relying upon your parents?
	When I did, it went badly.
	Okay, so give me some early examples of trusting your parents or trying to.
	I remember a time in seventh grade.
	I was trying out for the basketball team.
	And for some reason, I think it was because I didn't have a physical.
	For the first day, I would have to sit out until I could get a physical.
	And I normally don't tell my parents anything about...
	Even at that age, about my life, what's happening at school.
	So I told my dad, and I remember we were out in the parking lot, and I told him, and he went into a rage.
	And he went in, and I didn't witness it, but he raged at the coach.
	And I remember being humiliated because there was talk around the school and the community that it's like, okay, now we have...
	Your last name rule because your dad yelled at the coach because his kid didn't get to play the first day of trial.
	Sorry, what is your last name rule?
	This is the Molyneux rule.
	Now we have to verify that you have a physical before you try it for the basketball team.
	Sorry, that rule was named after your family because of your father?
	Yes. Okay.
	Got it.
	All right.
	Now, were you disappointed in having to sit out the first one because you didn't have your physical?
	Did you want your father to fix this in some way?
	Do you remember that at all?
	I remember I never wanted to play sports, really.
	Oh, okay.
	So, yeah.
	Yeah. So, I didn't really mind.
	I remember I was really upset I didn't make the team.
	I'm not athletic.
	I'm like probably 30th percentile athletic.
	But my dad was always the coach of my sports teams.
	And I always played every sports season that there was.
	Right. Okay.
	And what about your mother?
	My mother, I think she's very cold.
	I mean, it was like daily threats of...
	Probably from the age of, you know, toddlerhood to 11 or so, where she would daily or 48 hourly threats of getting the spoon out, and maybe it would happen once a week.
	We would get hit.
	And I assume the spoon, was it on bearskin?
	It was not.
	Okay, so through clothing, okay.
	Yeah. Mostly on the butt?
	Exclusively. Okay, got it.
	So, was it painful or more shocking or scary, or what was the experience of being hit with the spoon?
	It was painful.
	Right. Yeah.
	Okay. And how did your parents get along?
	They didn't get along that well when I was under the age of 10. They fought a lot.
	I remember, even at that age...
	Taking my dad's side a lot because my mom would get hysterical.
	What she said was she had a lot of homesickness.
	They wanted to move.
	There was all these fights about moving house.
	We almost moved one time.
	They bought a house, but then they backed out on moving us into it.
	There was another time they put us in a...
	I went to public school.
	There's a time they put us in a private school for a month, and they backed out of that.
	But I remember sitting on the...
	Our bedrooms were on the second floor.
	I remember sitting on the stairs when I was seven or eight and just hearing and trying to listen to them fight and understand what the fights were about.
	And maybe I could do something about it.
	And I always got the sense that my mom was the unreasonable one 60-70% of the time.
	But my dad would rage at her.
	There's never physical violence.
	But he would go on to...
	I guess he'd have a boundary, if you want to call it that.
	Where it's like, if you push this button too much, he'll...
	You kind of yell in rage and then close off.
	And do you remember any close or positive or intimate or pleasant times when you were little?
	Yeah, I remember my dad would make up stories, like bedtime stories.
	And it would be for 20 minutes to an hour.
	Just making up bedtime stories and we would go, oh yeah, and this happened and this happened.
	Probably under the age of 6 when this would happen.
	I guess this isn't my parents, but I was watched by my dad's mom who was crazy.
	But we had good times playing.
	would pretend to be animals maybe when I was a toddler and kind of
	around on the carpet Thank you.
	Okay. And who was the person that you were the most bonded to or close to as a child?
	I don't know.
	I don't know if there's anyone.
	Well, no, that's why I said not close to it, but the most.
	My dad, yeah.
	Okay. And what is your relationship like with your parents now?
	I recently had a big...
	So I lived with them for the past three years.
	And I, you know, catalyzed by your show, I had a sit-down with them and a talk.
	And it lasted like five hours.
	Well, the relationship now is...
	I told them that I want to be on a hiatus in our relationships.
	Honestly, as a manipulation, I kind of want to just end the relationship and not really speak to them.
	Sorry, but where are you living now?
	I moved out last week.
	Got it.
	Okay. And, I mean, I know it's tough to summarize five hours, but what was the general tenor and result of the conversation?
	Thank you.
	There's a lot of denial.
	My mom specifically refused to acknowledge that corporal punishment is abuse.
	Oh, so she accepted that she hit you guys with the spoon, but she did not say that she would not accept that that was abusive.
	It's a good thing.
	Do any of your siblings have kids?
	No. Okay.
	That's not surprising.
	Okay. Yeah.
	Okay, so she said it was good parenting to hit you guys as toddlers with spoons, right?
	Yes. And did your father agree with that?
	He kind of goes rubber bones a lot.
	He kind of agreed with me and then wouldn't...
	Agree with my mom.
	My mom is very aggressive, actually, and overt, and just seeing her face in my mind just now, she'd cock her head and kind of raise her chin, and she says,
	I did not abuse you!
	And my dad seemed sorrowful and pitiful, but...
	But I had a conversation with him maybe a week or two after and about his childhood.
	And his parents were divorced.
	His dad was a drunk.
	And I guess he did have kind of a good relationship with his grandmother.
	But his grandmother was mother to like seven girls that were all total crazy messes.
	Well, no, hang on, hang on.
	Sorry, okay.
	Kids don't just become crazy messes out of nowhere.
	She didn't just land it with three crazy girls.
	Well, it was like seven girls.
	Sorry, seven.
	She wasn't just landed with seven crazy girls.
	She must have done something to help make them crazy.
	Yeah, yeah.
	The dad was a terrible alcoholic that beat them.
	Right. Okay, so she chose to have children with a violent man.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	And then she chose to have seven of them and to keep them in his orbit.
	Yeah. Okay.
	Yeah, and so...
	So, hang on.
	So, your father, when you talked to him, your father immediately knew that he had had a bad childhood.
	No, he doesn't admit it.
	He said, I will never admit that I've had a bad childhood.
	Oh, sorry.
	So, was he bringing up the violence and the drunkenness as a positive thing?
	I was kind of, um, like...
	Interviewing him or interrogating him about mechanics of what happened with his family.
	It was later that he said, I refuse to believe that I had a bad childhood.
	Okay. Now, do you know why your father has to refuse to believe that he had a bad childhood?
	Because if he admitted that he had a bad childhood, he'd have to admit that I did.
	Well, if he admitted that he had a bad childhood, then he would have been responsible for reading a book or two on parenting.
	Yeah. Right?
	Thank you.
	Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
	If my mother teaches me to cook, and everything she teaches me tastes terrible, and then I want to become a cook, then I have to learn better.
	I have to pick up some books on cooking, because clearly the stuff my mother taught me is terrible, right?
	Yep. So, yeah, the moment you admit that you had a bad childhood is the moment that you are fully responsible for what you inflicted on your children, if that makes sense.
	So he's a smart guy.
	Yeah, I think he would totally, I mean, he's like, in his mid-60s, he would totally, you know, it would take, what, 15 years to recover from that at least, and then the, I don't know, I don't know, whatever the guilt of that,
	there's no way he could function, I don't think, if that came to the surface.
	Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe he's beyond recovery.
	That certainly does.
	You know, there's that one cigarette where you smoke that one, you get cancer, right?
	So, yeah, he could very well be beyond recovery.
	But it means that he prefers his own psychological self-preservation to the mental health of his children.
	Yeah, it's nasty.
	Well, I mean, it's a continuation of the same pattern from when you were a kid, right?
	Yep. Did your parents, so help me understand the last decade, early 20s to early 30s.
	So you went to college, is that right?
	Yeah. I went to college on a full scholarship to a school in a big city, a 10-12 hour drive away.
	And what did you take?
	I started out with biomedical engineering.
	Huh. And then the program dissolved the first year I was there.
	What? I'm not disagreeing with you, but what do you mean the program dissolved?
	It was a joint program with another...
	Did it get rained on?
	What does that mean?
	It was a joint program with another university.
	And I guess the relationship, I don't know, was messed up.
	They stopped offering...
	The place that I got the full scholarship to stopped offering biomedical engineering as a degree.
	Okay, but then don't they owe you a refund?
	I mean, I wasn't assertive at all.
	I mean, but they should offer that anyway.
	And they should actually offer you compensation for the last year, right?
	Unless you can transfer it to something else that you like, the credits.
	I never thought of that, but yeah, that's totally true.
	They really screwed me.
	Well, you and I assume many others, right?
	Oh yeah, yeah.
	How big was your first year class?
	Of college?
	Yeah. Oh, this is a fairly big school.
	This is a, I don't know, thousands?
	So they bought thousands of kids and charged them tens of thousands of dollars.
	For the biomedical, I don't know because I think I was in general courses.
	So it didn't get to the point where I was going to the other college to take the specialized courses yet.
	This happened.
	Maybe after the first year or at the beginning of the second.
	Okay, so what happened then?
	So I switched to, you know, bad decision.
	I switched to biology because I just, I got involved in drinking and partying and smoking weed.
	And so I just wanted to stay there and have my sort of...
	Status as, you know, oh, I got this full ride, like, I'm super smart, whatever.
	And so, like, I wanted to stay and have the status and also have the drinking and partying friends and just kind of, you know.
	And promiscuity?
	No. Oh, you didn't date?
	No. Okay.
	And why do you think you didn't date?
	I think it goes back to the vanity thing.
	Well, also, my dating strategy was really terrible.
	My dating strategy, for the most part, was essentially getting friend-zoned.
	I would just become friends with girls and develop secret infatuations with them.
	And then, maybe six months later, I would try to wait out their boyfriends or something.
	And six months later, I would say, you know...
	Blah, blah, blah.
	Like, oh, I've liked you this whole time, and then it would fade away.
	So I didn't have the guts to go up and ask a girl out right away or stuff like that.
	But, I mean, this is always the, you know, I'm sorry for the impertinent question.
	You don't have to answer anything you don't want to, but how did you take care of your sexual needs if you weren't dating or in sexual relationships?
	Pornography. Ah, okay.
	So would you say you became addicted to pornography?
	Yes. Okay.
	Got it.
	Okay. Got it.
	And, you know, it's easier than, I suppose, getting into a relationship.
	Now, did your family or friends ever notice that you weren't dating or ask you about it?
	Um... They would sabotage me if I tried to date.
	So, I guess an example...
	Maybe I was like 14. I remember this very vividly.
	And there was this video game song I really liked, so I would go around kind of singing it.
	And I'd come downstairs to dinner, singing this song, and my mom says, she's like, why are you singing that video game song?
	No girl's ever going to want to date you singing that song.
	Something like that.
	Sorry, how is that sabotage?
	Yeah. I guess it's like sabotaging my, I don't know, my confidence in women.
	Well, was she wrong?
	I don't know much about youth and dating culture, but just singing video game songs, is that attractive or not attractive to women?
	I would say not attractive.
	Right. So, I mean, it's not how I would phrase it at all.
	But if you were going on a date, you know, dressed in sweatpants and a muscle tee, right?
	And your mom said, no girl's going to want to kiss you dressed like that.
	I mean, it might be a bit harsh, but it's not entirely wrong.
	Yeah. I mean, I got no guidance at all on dating.
	I got maybe one book during puberty.
	Like, you know, sat down here, read this book about puberty.
	No guidance from my dad on dating.
	No guidance from my mom on dating.
	From my friends.
	Sorry, as opposed to what?
	What guidance did you get from your parents on anything?
	Other than how to throw a curveball.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's like, you know, how to field a ground ball.
	Right. I mean, you sound profoundly unparented.
	That's interesting to me.
	Go on.
	Well, I mean, the test you've heard me ask other people is, can you remember a piece of wisdom that your parents gave you as a child or a teenager that you still find a value to this day?
	Yeah, not really.
	The one answer I've thought of for that is that I forget the situation, but I think I was in a position to maybe buy Like, stolen goods at some point?
	Like, I kind of half knew that they were stolen, and my dad says, basically, don't do that.
	Because that's supporting stealing by proxy.
	That's maybe the strongest piece of wisdom.
	You know, I've thought about that question for, you know, upwards of an hour.
	Well, but it's not something that is particularly practical in your everyday life, because it's not like on a daily basis people are coming up to you.
	With an offer of stolen goods.
	I mean, I assume you're not applying to grants from USAID or anything, so it's not a foundational issue in your life, right?
	Yeah, I had to totally parent myself with the internet, pretty much.
	Okay. So, why do you think you didn't date?
	I mean, you said you got into these friend zone situations, but why do you think that happened?
	Thank you.
	I think it's a pathological fear of rejection.
	If I ask a girl out, then there's going to be this whole cacophony of humiliation that gets laid on me because she'll talk to her friends and be like, hey, get a load of this guy asking me out.
	And so then I always tried to navigate without that directness.
	Sorry, I'm trying to piece together your life here, and I'm getting very confused.
	And, you know, I apologize for this.
	Just sort of help me understand this.
	So you're saying you have a pathological fear of rejection, right?
	Yeah, at the time.
	Right. And yet you spent your childhood...
	Attacking and rejecting other kids, and then you ghosted the girl you slept with.
	Like, what am I not getting here?
	What am I not understanding?
	I mean, if you have a fear of rejection, then you should be not continually harming, punishing, and rejecting others, right?
	Correct. I mean, am I missing some part of the...
	I feel like I'm missing some part of an equation here, and I'm sorry for being dinged, but...
	It's like the guy who tortures other people physically and then says, you know, I have a pathological fear of physical pain.
	I mean, most people have a fear of rejection.
	And you know that because that's partly how you used to how you harmed people, right?
	Yes. I mean, your sister had a desire for acceptance and love and...
	You know, from her older brother, and you rejected that, right?
	And the girl obviously wanted to keep dating you.
	Yeah. And you ghosted her.
	And then you said, well, the problem was her friend.
	No, the problem was you ghosted her.
	So I'm trying to put this together.
	Like, if you're too afraid of rejection, but that's a mechanic by which you harmed other people.
	Now, you can say, you know, ironically, I had this great fear of rejection, which might seem odd because...
	I rejected and ghosted and harmed others through their desire for acceptance.
	But what's confusing to me is not that there's an inconsistency or an opposite here, but you talk about this without...
	It seems to me any sense of the connection between your harshness and rejection of others and the fact that you're very frightened of being rejected.
	I've never made that connection.
	Like, if you're some guy, they used to call this guy Chainsaw L, who just fired a whole bunch of people in the 80s.
	So, if you're a hiring manager and you fire, like, a hundred people, and then, you know, the next day you say, I'm terrified of being fired.
	Right? So, I mean, these two things can coexist, but you should be aware of the thread between them to say, I know I just fired 100 people, but I'm actually quite frightened of being fired myself.
	Maybe there's a connection.
	Do you know what I mean?
	But you're like, you gave me the first hour of like, here's how I rejected and, you know, even the kids who wanted to get let out from under the stairs, you rejected their pleas, right?
	You rejected your sister reaching out for you for some kind of comfort and love and protection.
	You ghosted the girl and so on, right?
	And you and your younger sister teamed up to make her...
	You know, feel fat or stupid or adopted or something like that, right?
	So, does this come as a surprise to you that this fear of rejection is kind of ironic?
	I don't know.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I mean, I'll give you a sense of what I'm feeling through this call is that I feel like...
	I kind of feel like a monster.
	Like... Yeah.
	I feel like...
	I feel like I have this...
	I don't know.
	All of this rejection that I've heaped on other people, maybe I had some excuse for it.
	I mean, I understand and I'm very remorseful for like...
	Okay, I've been super remorseful about this girl that we're talking about that I ghosted.
	I keep having dreams, like recurring dreams even now, like about her.
	Well, I'm sorry, but you haven't contacted her to apologize?
	I did maybe three or four years later and then maybe a couple years after that and she never contacted me and I think she still has me blocked on everything.
	Okay. And what about your sister?
	My sister?
	I had a conversation with her a couple months ago where I laid out I didn't lay out in full and I didn't appreciate in full how bad I was to her but I appreciated it at least somewhat.
	I said to her that it doesn't make sense that Why would I dislike you?
	And I said maybe logically the reason is that our parents kind of put us against each other.
	But I didn't get to the point where I realized that even at that age I was still indulging and being sadistic towards her.
	You mean sorry, as of a couple of months ago?
	Yeah, as of a couple of months ago.
	In what ways were you being sadistic towards her as of a couple of months ago?
	No, no, no.
	I wasn't being sadistic towards her a couple of months ago.
	This was the conversation I had with her.
	Okay. Where I kind of laid out, like, I'm really sorry for our relationship, and I know this is a core relationship, so I want this to be a good relationship.
	And I talked to her about...
	Kind of peaceful parenting concepts where it's like, you know...
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So, I mean, you're doing a lot of talking here, but did you ask her about her experience as a child and dig into what it was like for her?
	No. I talked probably 80% of the time.
	But why wouldn't you ask her what her experience was?
	She would just...
	When I asked her things, she would just give me very short answers.
	Okay, but it's going to take a while, right?
	Right. I mean, trust is not an easy thing to recover after almost 30 years.
	Yeah, she was...
	She's very ambivalent about the whole thing.
	Yeah. It doesn't seem like she cares.
	Or maybe she's given up on me.
	That's a possibility for sure.
	I don't know, but if you did her wrong and you do most of the talking and don't ask her about her experience, that still seems like it's all about you, doesn't it?
	Yeah, that's not right.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so you had one conversation with her a couple of months ago.
	You did most of the talking, and you certainly tried to apologize to some degree, and has anything in particular changed since then?
	I tried to call her, or I did call her a couple times.
	She avoids contacting me, because I want to have these...
	Well, I guess looking at it now, maybe it's like me diatribing at her.
	But I want to have these...
	I mean, sorry, how did the conversation benefit her?
	I think she got some insight on how we were raised and why our relationship is so fractured.
	Okay, but if she got a benefit from the conversation, why would she avoid another one?
	Well, my...
	Well, my thinking is that she's beyond...
	Redemption. Like, she's this...
	She's beyond redemption.
	Sorry, what do you mean?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So she's this sort of yelling third grade or, you know, elementary school teacher.
	And she is obese and she has...
	And she smokes weed all the time.
	Oh, she's a drug addict teacher?
	Yeah, so I'm not sure how, like, recoverable that is, you know?
	No boyfriend?
	She does have a boyfriend, yeah.
	Oh, she does, okay.
	And how overweight is she?
	Um, she's probably like 5'4", 250.
	Holy crap.
	Yeah. So, like, double her weight.
	And how long has she been overweight for?
	Uh, since her early 20s.
	Okay. She was a little bit overweight in childhood, and then she lost weight into high school, and then she got pretty big.
	Okay, so let's go back to you were in college, and you did your undergrad, friend-zoned a bunch, you didn't date, and then what happened?
	The studio early mid-twenties, and what happened after college?
	After college, I went to...
	A PhD program at a really, really top school.
	And was this still in biology?
	Yeah, this was like molecular biology stuff.
	Now, in my experience, people who have a little bit on the cold-hearted side like biology.
	Because it reduces the human body to a kind of machinery.
	And you can't hurt machinery emotionally.
	That makes sense with me.
	Everyone in biology is pretty cold.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	They're digging with relief to not find the soul.
	I mean, how do I empathize with a spleen or a liver, right?
	Okay, so you went to the PhD program and how did that go?
	Oh, it went really badly.
	So, in college I was...
	The last three years of undergraduate, I was addicted to weed.
	And that stopped for a year once I went to grad school, but then it continued.
	Well, you chose to quit, then you chose to start.
	It stopped, it continued.
	That's a good catch.
	Anyway, go on.
	And so I continued to use weed for like...
	Four years.
	So I was there for six years.
	Oh, you were doing the PhD program for six years?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And you didn't graduate?
	I mastered out at the end.
	But a master is a year or two, right?
	Right. And why did you not finish?
	Was it just a drug addiction?
	No, because I quit the drug addiction in like year four.
	And were you sort of on track for your PhD in year four?
	Is it a six-year PhD?
	Yeah, it's around five and a half, six years it's supposed to be.
	And were you on track at four?
	No, I was probably like a half a year or two a year behind, I would say.
	Okay. And then?
	And then, even when I quit, I was still living like I was addicted to weed.
	I had no energy.
	I would get this bad anxiety.
	Every time I would go in to do work, around two to four hours after, I would get so insanely anxious that I would have to leave.
	Like a panic attack, almost.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I would be like, I gotta get out of here.
	But it's nothing logical.
	My boss was very...
	Super laid back.
	I didn't really like the environment.
	I was very gynocentric and a lot of literal communists there.
	I guess maybe the social setting is dangerous, but I never appreciated that until I just said it out loud now.
	Did you talk to any counselors or therapists about your anxiety or lack of energy?
	No. I mean, it's free, right?
	In college.
	Yeah, it is.
	I wanted to do everything myself.
	Well, I guess like the guy who was doing electroshock therapy and your mom's father and tried to do it all, in a sense, without therapy and it didn't work, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	Alright, so then what happened?
	So, I guess, so a very significant thing happened midway through grad school, so year three.
	This is while you were still on the weed, right?
	Yeah, I had a psychosis.
	Oh, gosh.
	Okay, were you on strong weed, or did you think it had some, because I know that the weed and the psychosis have some sort of relationship.
	Yeah, I think there is a connection there for sure.
	But it also coincided with, so I was 25 at the time.
	So until the age of 25, I was pretty much a total NPC.
	Kind of like a Reddit kind of atheist kind of type.
	Like I didn't think super critically about.
	What I've been taught and what I was told and the propaganda that I'd been consuming.
	Well, I mean, how could you?
	I mean, you wouldn't have even been taught philosophy in any practical way or had exposure to...
	I mean, it's not like shows like mine are particularly common, right?
	No, they're not.
	Not at all.
	And sorry, when did you first start listening to me?
	Oh, you said just a couple of months ago, right?
	Yeah, like a few months ago.
	Okay, got it.
	How did you come across me, by the way?
	Franson. Ah, okay, got it.
	All right, so you...
	You had a psychosis, and what was that?
	What was the story with that?
	Well, so, the subjective experience of it was, like, I got really into, like, basically conspiracy theories.
	And if you consider conspiracy theories under the concept of, what is the concept?
	A system is what it does.
	Yes. The purpose of a system is what it repeatedly does.
	Yeah, if you consider them under that concept, then what they are maybe is not a force for eliminating corruption.
	What they are is a force for undermining the moral authority of government.
	And so I sort of was looking into all these things and sort of the moral authority of government, all the propaganda, and part of it was like the IQ stuff.
	I was trained to be able to parse that scientific papers myself and really critically look at it.
	My entire worldview was washed out from under me, and I was using weed also.
	I remember very vividly, my worldview was so washed out that I had to take an hour to...
	Litigate whether the earth truly was flat or round.
	Okay, it's round.
	But I'm like a PhD student.
	There's this weird disconnect with me because I'm a PhD student in a very top university and I'm looking at this stuff.
	And so then I get this idea, okay, I'm going to show everyone this.
	I'm going to walk out.
	Like, I'm going to open everyone's eyes.
	And then as soon as I thought that, I get this response.
	And it wasn't a voice, but it was like this demonic feeling, fear thing attacking me.
	It was like the deepest fear I ever felt in my life.
	Essentially, it didn't say no, but it said no.
	It said no to what, do you think?
	Me sharing all this information with people.
	And then I go, what are you?
	Are you a demon?
	I'm having this dialogue in my head.
	And then it gives me another response that's like a feeling response.
	And I had this kind of quote-unquote dialogue with it.
	Maybe this lasted 15 minutes.
	At the end of it, I was convinced that I was going to die, that it was going to kill me.
	And did you, I mean, I guess you're an atheist and all, right?
	So did you view this as a kind of demonic presence or entity?
	I viewed it as, I guess I don't want to get too into the deals, but I was coming across this stuff that made it seem like...
	Thank you.
	Like, telepathy was possible or something.
	So, I guess maybe I'll sort of dishonest.
	My idea was that, okay, I'll create this telepathy machine that tells people all this information and beams it directly into their heads.
	And then I go, well...
	I gotta tell you, that would be a pretty impressive PhD thesis.
	I would be like, wow, I should smoke weed.
	Yeah, that's the kind of ideas it gives you.
	And they make sense, right?
	Yeah, and it made perfect sense.
	And so I was thinking, well, okay, I'll create this telepathy machine, and then I'll tell everyone, and then I go, wait.
	If this technology has been hidden for so many decades, the government probably has this.
	Then, if the government has this machine, then based on my search history, they're monitoring me.
	And then I go, then as soon as I think that, that's when I feel the feeling.
	And I'm like, are you monitoring me?
	And it's like, I get a feeling of death.
	And then I get convinced that I'm going to die.
	The government is going to kill you because of this...
	That they're going to know that you know about this telepathy thing, right?
	In fact, they wouldn't even need to monitor you because of telepathy.
	Anyway. Yeah, yeah.
	So, this happened maybe in the course of 10-15 minutes, and then I was convinced I was going to die.
	So, I was living like 12 hours away from my parents at the time, and so I called them at like midnight, and they drove up.
	And did you tell them, I'm having an episode, or what was their perception of that?
	I said, I think I'm going to die.
	Can you please come here?
	Don't turn on the Bluetooth in the car.
	Pray for me.
	Ah, they're religious, but you're not, right?
	Yeah, and at that point, I was like, after that fear attack sort of passed, I sort of prayed, and I felt like, then all over my body for the rest of the night,
	I felt these goosebumps.
	And all my hair and my body was standing up on end, and I felt like that God had saved me.
	Right. Because, you know, my mom got her parents to pray and all, you know, sort of a prayer, I don't know, warrior kind of thing.
	Mm-hmm.
	And so they drove up.
	They took me back.
	I was kind of, you know, talking to them about, like, you know, hey, the government's lying about this and this and this, and no one's really listening to me, and they're all very concerned.
	But after a couple days, I went back.
	Sorry, went back.
	Went back to the city where I was doing grad school in.
	Yeah. And then I...
	Let's see.
	I just held my train of thought.
	So two weeks later, I was still smoking the weed for like one year after that.
	Oh, wow.
	But did you make the association of the weed and this episode?
	Yeah. And I cut way back on it, I think.
	Okay, got it.
	Yeah. But I remember two weeks after that, I sort of felt the, I don't know, specter of the demon coming back.
	And I sort of fought it off.
	And then that was the last time that I had anything like that.
	Right. Okay.
	So, and that was like, you know, I remember the exact date.
	It's in March.
	In 2018, and that was like, sort of marked, I don't know, a change in my, a total change in my life.
	And then after that, I felt like, I don't really want to do this PhD anymore, but I'm so far into it, that like, maybe I should finish, but then I was still plagued by, I don't know, just this lethargy, and I quit weed,
	and I was very mystical.
	Like, I turned from, like, an atheist to very, very mystical.
	Whoa, sorry, mystical or religious?
	Mystical. Right, so religion without rules.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Okay, got it.
	Yeah. And so I was like, my goal in life, my goal in life is to, like, I don't know, awaken my kundalini.
	Your what now?
	You know, like, in Hinduism, they have that serpent that, like, travels up your spine.
	And then you reach enlightenment?
	Yeah. Like that.
	Okay, got it.
	So I want to awaken the serpent.
	I want to do these meditations where I see a certain light.
	And so it was like, I go from this totally stringent atheist to totally mystical.
	And obviously, you had a show.
	Yeah. How mysticism is isolation.
	Yeah. And it's totally true.
	One thousand percent.
	Yeah, at least with religion you get some companionship, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah. And so then it eventually got to a head with the PhD that I was so behind that I just had to get out.
	Well, how much do you think it would have been, like, how much more would you have had to do, do you think?
	Probably two full years of work.
	Okay. The problem is also with the PhD, the lab had a wheelhouse where it was like these experiments that they've been doing for 15-20 years that's sort of a formula to generate publications.
	And I didn't want to work in that wheelhouse.
	I wanted to do different things.
	And I did.
	I learned different technologies.
	But part of the problem also was that...
	A lot of my results were negative when I ventured into the new technologies, but I wasn't prudent in the sense that I didn't have some stable backup project that would just get my thesis over.
	Right. Okay.
	So you left?
	Yes. This was in 2021.
	I left.
	And how was COVID and all that in this environment?
	Oh, it was awful.
	I could examine the technology of it because of the expertise I had, and I knew that this vaccine, this is not good.
	And then all the people around me are getting these crazy side effects.
	I think I had COVID before it even.
	It popped off in March, right?
	I think I had it.
	I think I had it in December before because there was someone from our lab from China and she came back super sick.
	And that was the sickest I've been in like five years.
	anyway so like um
	So it was terrible and it was very authoritative and I eventually did get the...
	I didn't want to get the shot I held out for like a year.
	And this was when I was still thinking I'll finish.
	I was like, okay, I gotta make the deal.
	I gotta get it.
	And so I got it.
	So even though the people in the biology program would have had some concerns and there were all these side effects, people were still mandating it?
	You would think so.
	You would think that people that were most knowledgeable about it would have the most concerns, but they didn't.
	They were the most militant about it.
	Wow. Academia, I remember when it used to be full of rebels.
	Actually, no, it probably never was.
	It's just a fantasy I have from time to time.
	All right.
	Okay, so you, and did you have an okay experience with the VAX as a whole?
	No, like for 48 hours, my heart rate was, I think I had to get two shots.
	I hate needles anyway, but for 48 hours, my heart rate was like elevated.
	Um, but other than that, I didn't get, thank God I didn't get any, like, I don't know, injury or permanent injury that I'm aware of.
	Good. Okay.
	All right.
	So then how long after you got the vax did you leave?
	Hmm. Maybe months.
	Uh, yeah, it was, I left in like November of 2021 and I got it in like the spring of that year.
	Oh. They started rolling it out in the previous summer, and I tried to push it off and off and off to the point.
	I was hoping maybe they would roll back on it, but they made it mandatory.
	Right. Yikes.
	Yeah. It really shows you that knowledge does not grant you wisdom, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	All the people who should have every reason to accept that there's some potential, I mean, obviously untested, like by definition, right?
	Yeah. And yet, it doesn't matter, right?
	Yeah. And not to get into too much detail, but, like, the protein target, even the mRNA that they made could have been targeted to a different protein.
	Like, it makes me think it was deliberately harmful because the mRNA could have been targeted specifically to a different protein.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, anyway.
	No, I get it.
	Okay, so, um, so you leave and then what?
	And no dating, of course, during these times of, like, Some, you know, mental health issues, stability issues, and quitting drugs and all that, right?
	Yeah, none of that.
	And then I leave and go back to living with my parents.
	And basically, the last three years, I kind of, three years plus, I kind of just, I had this idea, and I followed through with like 90%.
	To self-teach myself software development.
	Oh. And I have this really good...
	Yeah. And I have this really good project that's like sort of a combinational entrepreneurial project while simultaneously being like a portfolio for a job if the entrepreneurial aspect of it doesn't work out.
	Yeah. And once I moved home, I worked on that very...
	Like a lot, for five to six months.
	And then I started falling back into this kind of anxiety thing about...
	Sorry, so you were working on a software project, but you have no particular entrepreneurial experience or anything like that, right?
	Yeah, I just had an idea how to monetize the project.
	Okay, got it.
	And were you ever able to do that?
	It's still unfinished.
	Ah, okay.
	Yeah. So, it's like 80% done, 90% done, but it's like this thing that was always in the back of my, I don't know, head for those three years,
	but I did how I wasted time, usually just playing video games.
	Oh, so it wasn't like there was a major focus on the project?
	No, there wasn't at first.
	There was at first, and then I got lazy.
	Well, what were you living on?
	I had savings from the PhD as a stipend.
	Oh, and you get to keep that even if you don't finish?
	Correct. Oh, okay.
	Interesting. And what kind of debt did you graduate with, if any?
	Like $5,000, but I paid it right off.
	Oh, good stuff.
	Okay. All right.
	So, you didn't finish the software project, so you left the PhD three years ago, right?
	Yeah. And other than the software project, have you been up to anything in particular?
	Not really.
	I helped my dad flip, like, with some construction stuff.
	Right, okay.
	And have your parents, what are their thoughts about...
	This process or part of your life?
	I think my mom thinks that I'm like my grandpa in that I have a physiological brain chemical depression imbalance that is hopeless or not curable or something.
	She hasn't outright said that, but that's kind of what...
	Okay, so, sorry, go ahead.
	Go ahead.
	And they're kind of, when I had this five-hour confrontation conversation with them, one thing they said is they're scared of me.
	Their perception is that every time they would maybe try to push me a little, then I would, and I don't think this is true, that I would like, I don't know.
	I would be like Chinese handcuffs.
	It's like you get too close and you get snared with coldness.
	Okay. So they view themselves as sort of helpless in the face of your coldness, is that right?
	Yeah. But your father feels that hitting children with implements...
	Is good parenting, but he doesn't feel that might have anything to do with your coldness?
	I think my dad kind of gets it a little.
	He was mildly remorseful, if that's even a thing.
	But my mom, for sure, is like, no way.
	Right. Can't have anything to do with it, anything like that.
	Yeah. Okay, got it.
	Alright, so how was it that when you contacted me, what was the goal for you?
	The goal for me was to cry, which I've done that.
	The goal for me was to...
	I mean, I read UPB and I come to this conclusion that it's like I haven't been living a life of virtue or...
	Morality my entire life.
	And anytime I've maybe been moral, it's been totally accidental.
	And so I just want, I just need guidance as I, I feel like I'm starting, I have like a year of savings.
	And so I feel like I'm starting from nothing, pretty much.
	And like crossing the desert, all this stuff.
	Sorry, you have a year of savings.
	That you can live on before you're out of money, right?
	Correct. Okay.
	And so, just like guidance on how to navigate this and how to live a life of philosophy when I haven't been.
	And how to get to a point where I can have a family.
	So you want to get married and have kids?
	Yeah, I only really...
	Basically, since I listened to your show, I realized that I want to get married and have kids.
	Okay. And why do you...
	And I'm not disagreeing with you, but why do you want to get married and have kids?
	I really...
	I love kids so much.
	I think they're...
	I just have so much regret and anger for my lost potential as...
	I didn't have any parenting or no one took an interest in me when I was younger.
	And I just want to give that to kids.
	And I think it's the way to inoculate people against this crazy world is peaceful parenting.
	Okay. Well, you're certainly not going to find me arguing with you much about that.
	Okay. All right.
	And so, what is the longest romantic relationship you've ever had?
	Basically, no.
	I don't know.
	Three months, six months, if you count the couple relationships I had when I was 19 or 20. Okay.
	Alright, and when was the last time you had a romantic relationship?
	19 or 20. Okay, so it's been...
	A good old chunk of time.
	Yes. So, what do you think a quality woman is looking for when it comes to a husband and a father for her children?
	She wants to be provided for.
	She wants someone that has relationship experience.
	Um, and as good at navigating and having a relationship, um,
	you.
	Virtue. Right.
	Okay. And do you want a woman who wants to stay home with kids?
	Yeah. I mean, I would potentially maybe be open to staying home with kids, but yeah.
	For sure, at least for those first years, it's very critical for the mother to stay home.
	And do you want to live in a city or the country?
	The suburbs.
	The suburbs, okay.
	And so what kind of, let's say, how many kids would you ideally like?
	Four to five.
	Okay. So what kind of income would you need as a husband and a father for kids in the suburbs?
	And a wife who stays home?
	150, maybe?
	150? No.
	If you want a house, right?
	Yeah. Is it more or less?
	Oh, it's more, yeah.
	It's more, okay.
	I mean, if you want the suburbs, right?
	Okay. Well, yeah, not necessarily like, I don't need a massive house.
	Just good enough.
	Okay, well, do me a favor.
	Don't tell me, but you're at a computer, right?
	Okay, so do me a favor and tell me, you can look this up.
	Sure. Tell me, what is the average price of a four-bedroom home in the neighborhood that you want to live in?
	$250 to $350.
	Really? Yeah.
	Oh, interesting.
	Okay, I'm a little shocked, but obviously that's good.
	I've never really heard of houses that cheap, but I guess it's not in a major metropolis, right?
	Oh, it's not.
	Okay, got it.
	All right.
	So, and you would need, I assume, two cars?
	Yeah. And health insurance and life insurance and...
	All other kinds of good stuff like that.
	And would you want your kids to be in private school or homeschooled?
	Homeschooled. Okay.
	So then you'll need a woman who's got, you know, a good degree of general knowledge and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	That's why kind of maybe I wanted to, like, do some homeschooling if that was even possible because I would be very good at that.
	Right, right.
	No, I think you could, obviously, you've done a lot of learning, and I'm sure you could do a lot of teaching, too.
	Okay. All right.
	So, let's, okay, let's go with, right, I'm fine with that.
	Let's say you can get by with four kids and a house and two cars on 150k a year.
	Okay, so how are you going to get to 150K?
	Thank you.
	I was considering having a job, putting money into Bitcoin, and also owning rental properties.
	It's a bit of a wish list, though, right?
	So how are you going to get to, if you only have a year's income, how are you going to get to rental properties?
	Through your dad?
	I think I could get a line of credit for the...
	For the properties.
	If I make enough money this year or next year, the bank could give me a line of credit.
	Okay. And then you would invest in getting rental properties.
	And I suppose through your father and through your history with that, you have experience running rental properties, right?
	No. Oh, you don't.
	Okay. Okay.
	But I mean, you're obviously a smart guy.
	You could learn that.
	Yeah, I think I could figure it out.
	Right. Okay.
	All right.
	And how long do you think it will take for you to get to something like that?
	In the vicinity or in the direction of?
	In the direction of?
	Yeah. I really think I could get in the direction of it this year.
	Well, no, but you need to get your line of credit.
	I thought you said it would be next year to get your line of credit.
	Yeah, I could.
	That's my hope is that I could get the line of credit next year.
	Right. So that would be more than a year because you get to get the line of credit and then you have to get the rental properties and start making money from that, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, got it.
	All right, so how old do you want your...
	Oh, sorry, what's the sort of gap that you might be comfortable with with regards to your bride, to the mother of your children, right?
	Because you're 31, you start cooking sort of early to mid-30s.
	And what's your maximum time gap or age gap that you'd be willing to live with?
	Uh, like seven years.
	Okay, so let's say you're really cooking with gas, 33, 34, 35, so then you're looking at women sort of mid to late 20s, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so...
	By that point, you have been 15 years, you know, 13 to 15 years without a relationship.
	Okay. Sorry, don't okay me if I've got something wrong.
	I'm agreeing.
	Okay. So, how are you going to overcome her skepticism that you'll be a good partner with no experience, right?
	I mean, if you were somebody who was 33 and you were trying to apply for a job...
	And you had no particular work experience, you would understand that your employer might have some concerns, right?
	Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
	I think I would get dating experience all throughout that time.
	I plan to get into dating.
	But I mean, I guess that's different from a long-term relationship.
	I mean, I guess the other thing would be like...
	Degree of self-knowledge, that's kind of the stopgap.
	That's the only thing I can think of that would compensate, at least even partially, for the lack of relationship experience.
	Right, right.
	Okay. I think the biggest obstacle, I mean, you're obviously a very intelligent guy.
	So, you know, I love to kiss the ass of the audience.
	But you're a very intelligent guy, and so you can, I'm sure, master just about any intellectual challenge, and you certainly have the brainpower to run.
	Rental properties.
	What do you think is the biggest obstacle to you becoming a husband and father in a sort of productive, healthy, and loving relationship?
	It's like my tendency to stagnate.
	There's this pattern of almost getting done with the PhD, and then the pattern of almost getting done with the software thing.
	And it's like, maybe I'll almost get done with dating and then I'll be 40. And so it's like, I think, it's this pattern?
	I guess that's a bit abstract.
	No, I think it's a pattern, but I don't know if you know what underlies it.
	So I've tried to look at what underlies it, and weirdly enough, what came up is that same feeling of death that I felt at the beginning of the psychosis.
	Is like, I sort of feel a diminished version of that when I go about trying to, I don't know, like advance my life.
	Yeah. Would you like the answer?
	Oh, I would love the answer.
	Drumroll, please.
	I would love the answer.
	Right. Now, of course, I say this with all the confidence of a guy who could be 100% wrong.
	Just so you know.
	But I'm confident that doesn't mean I'm right.
	But I have the answer.
	I'm all ears.
	So, you stall out at a time when people have to start liking you.
	So, if you look at your PhD, let's say you'd finished your PhD, well, you would have had to get a job in the field, right?
	Yeah. To get a job in the field, people have to like you.
	If you finished your software project, you'd have to take it out into the marketplace, right?
	Yes. And people would have to like you even to take a meeting.
	Right. With the girl who really liked you, you ghosted her because she was expressing real affection to you.
	So you choke things out when you get close to having to be liked.
	When you can't move forward without being liked, you panic out.
	Or you fade out.
	So then I have a...
	I'll be honest, that didn't super emotionally resonate with me, but it makes total logical sense.
	Well, what did the demon say about you?
	I'm gonna kill you.
	You deserve to die.
	Yeah. You're going to die, right?
	Yeah. Now, dying is a punishment.
	Being killed is a punishment, right?
	Correct. So, the punishment for what?
	Are you talking about this specific instance, or in general?
	Well, let's talk to the demon.
	I'll take him very seriously.
	Like a roleplay?
	Well, I can do it that way, too.
	Let's do it that way.
	Yeah, let's do it that way.
	Okay. Alright.
	Oh, demon!
	You say that this guy deserves death.
	Please tell me your case.
	Well, I gotta kill him because he's a liability.
	Okay, and why is he a liability?
	Because he'll go out into the world and diminish my power, kind of expose me.
	Okay, and how is he going to do that?
	What's your concern about that?
	I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to understand your thinking.
	Yeah, he's going to build an army of connection and social, I don't know, social nets, social warfare, and that undermines me.
	Well, I don't believe you.
	I mean, I've done all of that, and no demon has ever visited me, so that's not it.
	I mean, I assume as a demon, you're not overly invested in telling the truth.
	That would be kind of weird.
	I'm a demon, but I'm an angel of honesty.
	Right? So it's not this supposed connection thing because he's not doing any of that.
	So how about you try again, but don't lie through your forked tongue.
	Come on, man.
	Just tell me the truth.
	What you got against this guy?
	It's not because he's building some giant army of connection.
	The guy barely leaves his room.
	Yeah, he's just pathetic, man.
	Okay. So, you understand, he can't be both pathetic and a giant anti-demon warrior, right?
	Right. So, tell me what you got against the guy.
	I'm not disagreeing with you.
	Maybe you've got a great case against him, but it ain't this, right?
	again.
	So, my case against him?
	Yeah. Why does he deserve death?
	I mean, it's a death penalty, right?
	It's a death penalty for what crime?
	It's a death penalty for crime.
	For being cold and cruel to others.
	Okay, now we're getting somewhere.
	Okay, so tell me the case against him and I'll listen.
	The case against him?
	Give me the top three things that you think gives him the death penalty.
	Thank you.
	you.
	I'm fogging up.
	No, you're not.
	Do you want me to do it?
	Yeah. Okay, he was cruel to his sister, right?
	Yes. He was cruel to women?
	Yes. And he was cruel to himself.
	abused himself with alcohol and drugs and wasted his potential.
	Thank you.
	yeah again i don't know if those would be something like that right yeah those are yeah okay can you put on the demon head
	sure sure okay so you feel that cruelty to the
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah. You're an absolute fucking coward, and I have nothing but contempt for you.
	Do you know why?
	Why aren't you talking to his parents?
	Why are you bullying this guy who was himself bullied as a kid and helpless as a child?
	Why are you blaming him for what this guy did at four years old, and you're not saying shit about the parents?
	You're not a demon of vengeance.
	You're not a judge, jury, and executioner.
	You're a coward picking on victims.
	You're in league with the parents.
	Why aren't you?
	Oh, well, you know, he's cruel to the helpless.
	Okay. Were his parents nice?
	Answer me this.
	You were there.
	Were his parents nice to him?
	They're nice enough.
	They're nice enough?
	They beat him?
	Yeah, but they provided a lot of material support.
	And? Are you saying that it's okay to beat children if you buy them a fucking cookie?
	that you can buy your way out of child abuse?
	Child abuse is protection.
	Oh, okay.
	So child abuse is protection.
	Okay, so if child abuse is so good, why are you shitting on this guy for being cruel?
	He was serving virtue then.
	He was helping.
	He was providing inoculations.
	So why would he deserve death if he was doing good work, according to you?
	Because if the parent's cruelty is good, why is my client's cruelty not good?
	He knows better.
	He has more agency than others.
	Ha ha!
	Fuck off!
	What a load of shit.
	You're saying that my client had more agency at the age of four than his parents had at the age of 30?
	Yeah, they're stupid.
	You can't.
	You can't.
	Come on, man.
	You gotta do a better job than this.
	You cannot hold and hold up the four-year-old who's the victim of child abuse.
	And say he has infinitely more agency than the parents who are abusing him.
	Come on, man.
	Give me a good...
	I'll listen to a good case.
	This is insane.
	I mean, this guy hated a two-year-old.
	Right? And his parents also hated him.
	Where do you think he learned the hatred from?
	Thank you.
	Yeah. No, listen, you want to be a tough guy, right?
	You're a tough demon guy.
	Okay, fine, Beelzebub.
	Then go talk to the parents.
	I mean, let me ask you this.
	Did you say anything to the parents when they were abusing my client?
	No, I like the parents.
	You like the parents?
	Right. So you're just a manifestation of parental hatred.
	And the parents who would prefer my client die rather than reveal their abuses.
	You're just like someone in the mafia who says, oh, the witness should be rubbed out.
	Like you're just there to protect evil and keep secrets of abuse.
	But let's not pretend you're some big tough judging guy.
	You're just a coward who wants to rub out a witness.
	You're just a coward.
	I will see who wins.
	Ooh, isn't that sinister?
	Now listen, by the way, old Beelzebub, I'm going to call you Beelzebub because I like the name Bob.
	So, Beelzebub, listen, I want to be fair, like, you know, I've cussed you out and all of that and called you a coward, but that's only in the present context.
	I get that you were there, you were birthed out of a desire to protect my client.
	I get that.
	I understand that.
	And I actually...
	He's here because of you.
	Right, so you had to kill his empathy and come up with all this tough, leather-winged talk, because if he had kept his empathy as a child, he probably would have been destroyed.
	I mean, one way or another.
	That's totally true.
	Sorry? That's totally true.
	Right, so you're there, you listen, man.
	I get you're there to protect him.
	I get all of that.
	And you had the sentence of death upon his empathy so that he could survive this screwed-up family.
	So I get you're a protector.
	I really do.
	And I just, like, let's not do this mealy-mouthed bullshit now because, you know, Bro's in his 30s.
	He's moved out.
	He's not dependent on his parents.
	He's an independent guy, right?
	Well, maybe I'm a gargoyle, not a demon.
	Maybe, yeah.
	Maybe. And, you know, like, With all due respect for how you kept him alive and kept him going as a kid, you know, obviously at great cost to his empathy and all of that, but, you know, sometimes if the ship is sinking, you have to throw your greatest treasures overboard just to live,
	and I get that you did that, and I respect that.
	But let's just be honest about that and say, I had to kill his empathy so that he would survive as a child, but I don't need to do that anymore.
	So let's fire that old engine back up because he wants to be...
	Like, bro, like, Bob, Bob, what the hell was the point of keeping him alive if he can't enjoy his adulthood?
	If he can't fall in love?
	If he can't bond with his wife and kids?
	Like, you understand that?
	Then you're just propping up a zombie, in a sense, right?
	The whole point of keeping him alive was so that he could live a better life.
	Can we agree with that?
	Yeah, but then I kind of go away if I'm not in charge or I don't have a significant seat at the table.
	Okay, okay.
	And I apologize for my earlier harshness.
	I just wanted to shock everyone out of the habit.
	So, first of all, you're never going to be away from the table because you are an essential aspect of what kept him alive.
	And honestly, you know the world a lot better than...
	He and I do, right?
	Because you see the darkness there that sometimes, in order for people to stay sane, we have to pretend isn't there, right?
	Like, you see all the zombies, you see all of the NPCs, you see all the dangerous people who are like, oh, we're taught to hate the unvaccinated, let's get them, right?
	Like, you see that monstrosity of a planet, which in order for us to have happiness and love and any kind of sanity, we have to not look at, right?
	Because it's pretty twisting to stare at that, and that's what your job is, and I massively appreciate that.
	So, I guarantee you, as my client goes through life, as my client goes through life, do we really think his parents are the last assholes we're ever going to meet?
	No, I gotta be...
	You will always have a role, because we don't wake up in heaven.
	You will always have a role, because you're always going to be necessary.
	Well, to make a video game analogy, you've got to have a tank to have a good team composition.
	Yeah, exactly right.
	Exactly right.
	That's perfect.
	So, I was just annoyed at this falsification, but you as a guardian are absolutely essential, because the world is getting destabilized, right?
	I mean, I'm sure you're following politics and the rooting out of, you know, deep Balrog-style corruption.
	In the government and so on.
	And that may spread.
	So there's going to be a lot of destabilization.
	There's going to be a lot of crazy, angry, hysterical people out there in the world for the next couple of decades at least.
	So, you know, we absolutely need you at the table.
	We need you scanning the horizon.
	We need you guarding.
	But at the same time, we can minimize the power that bad people have in our lives by choosing to have good people in our lives.
	That doesn't mean that you are not essential.
	You are essential because we still have to move through the world and there will still be dangerous people in the world.
	But if you're in charge, we don't have a life.
	Right? It's like if we're in rehab and you're like the rehab doctor, the whole point of the rehab doctor is to get you back out into the world.
	If the rehab doctor says, well, I want to keep you in rehab for the rest of your life, you can only do that by keeping breaking your bones, right?
	Yeah. And that's why you keep pushing this panic button.
	So you keep him broken so that you can stay in charge of the rehab.
	And I'm like, but the purpose of the rehab is to get him back whole into a world that's different from his childhood, right?
	I mean, you don't save someone from drowning to bring them back to the bowels of the ship and waterboard them.
	And it's tough for you to lay down your weapons.
	And I get that.
	And I sympathize with that.
	But the whole point of guarding him was to liberate him.
	If you stay in charge forever, he's never going to outgrow his childhood.
	Because his parents, it felt like as a kid, right?
	And it was that way as a kid emotionally that he felt like he was going to be controlled and bullied forever.
	And so you have an eternity in your nature.
	Because it feels like if you go to a four-year-old and you say, hey kid, Don't worry.
	In 15 or 16 years, you might be free.
	I mean, say that to an adult, right?
	15-year prison sentence is an eternity.
	You say that to a four-year-old.
	This is why you have an eternal aspect to your nature, because it felt like you were going to have to guard for eternity, and for most of human history, you would, right?
	Because the culture wouldn't change.
	You wouldn't be able to get assholes out of your life through most of human history.
	You were trapped with them.
	But I'm sort of here from the outside to tell you that we live in a kind of different world now where Your job can, in fact, diminish.
	And you're free thereby.
	I'm sure there's stuff that you want to do other than constantly hammering the panic button and telling him he's going to die.
	That's not a fun job for the rest of your existence, right?
	No, it's not fun.
	And the eternity thing, that really rings home.
	It feels like an eternal part, an eternal aspect.
	Right, and again, for most of our evolution.
	It was.
	This is why the devil is immortal, right?
	Because for most of our existence, you couldn't eliminate violent, abusive jerks from your life because it was everyone, right?
	So that's the confrontation that I would have and to get him to loosen his grip and to stop feeling that there's imminent predation is tough.
	It's tough, but deep down he wants to because it's kind of exhausting.
	But he doesn't know how, or the best way to do it.
	Yeah, in a weird way, can I say something?
	One way that I think sublimates it is acknowledging and realizing that, I said this before, that peaceful parenting is the inoculation.
	That's actually the healthy form of the guardian.
	Maybe I'm wrong, but that's kind of how I've...
	At least moved out a little, and through listening to your shows, I feel like I've had a mild degree of integration with that part of me because of that insight.
	Well, it is, but in order to get to peaceful parenting, you have to have the capacity to be loved.
	Right? And that's why I wanted to talk to good old Bob.
	Because if you feel that you have done crimes worthy of death, so to speak, how are you going to ask a good, honest, moral woman to love you?
	Join me, oh virtuous citizen, in my flight from the death penalty!
	And that's the confrontation, I think, that...
	Needs to happen because if you can't find a way to feeling that you can be loved, then all of your romantic aspirations will be based upon a fraud.
	You should like me, although I do not like myself.
	You should love me, though I believe at some level I deserve the death penalty for what I did when I was four.
	You can't get love.
	Right? I mean, it's a cliche, right?
	Like, you can't expect to be loved if you don't have at least some positive affection for yourself.
	And that means finding a way to forgive what you did.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Are the mechanics of that, I guess, talk therapy and, like, internal talk?
	Well, the...
	Opposite of self-attack is just anger.
	Really? Yeah.
	See, everybody wants to get sort of self-forgiveness with all this huggy, touchy-feely shit.
	I don't know, maybe that works for girls.
	It doesn't work for guys.
	Yeah, that never resonated with me.
	Yeah, no, it doesn't.
	It doesn't really work.
	So, if you robbed a bank...
	Well, sorry, that's not the best example of an immoral thing these days.
	If you rob a daycare...
	Okay, whatever, right?
	If you rob a daycare...
	And you, oh, my terrible guy, I robbed the daycare and so on.
	Okay. But if you realize that there was somebody behind you with a gun at your back, making you rob the daycare, then the moral equation changes, right?
	Right. So the question is not, why was I cruel to my middle sister?
	The question is, what the hell would have happened if I hadn't done that?
	If you'd have stood up to your parents and said, stop being mean, stop hitting us, or I'm going to call the police, because what you're doing is illegal.
	I don't know if it is or not, but, you know, whatever, right?
	Let's just say we lived in a reasonably just society where it was.
	Or, at the very least, I'm going to tell the priest, I'm going to tell the teacher that you're beating us.
	And you better get your shit together, parents, and stop being abusive.
	What would have happened?
	Death. Well, certainly that's a significant biological risk to that way of thinking.
	So this is why when you want to go, in a sense, public or talk about what happened, which you would have to do, I think, if you want to get married and have kids.
	You've got to be honest about your past.
	So if you do all of that, then you are breaking ranks and talking about Vile, at least to my mind, criminal evils.
	And if you had threatened to...
	Throughout most of human history, kids were in a very precarious position, evolutionarily speaking, right?
	And that's what we've all inherited.
	So kids were in a very precarious position.
	And what I mean by that is, like, half the kids died.
	And so you really had to secure 150% parental Investment and positivity in order to survive as a kid.
	I mean, when I did my tour of Australia, I was talking about how like 40% of the kids of the Aborigines were murdered.
	They would like lie them back, hold them down and pour sand in their mouths.
	So, evolutionarily speaking, we cannot displease parents.
	We cannot.
	Because all of the kids who were willing to displease parents did
	you.
	Right. Yeah.
	We have to be willing to just...
	We cannot...
	We cannot just please parents.
	If parents say the price of survival is to be mean to your sister, what do our genes tell us to do?
	Come on.
	Mr. Biologist, what do our genes tell us to do if that's the price of survival?
	You gotta...
	You gotta keep the genes going.
	You gotta survive.
	Hey, man, if I gotta be mean to my sister...
	In order to survive and reproduce, I'll be mean to my sister.
	Because if, and let's say it's only 5%, you know how evolution works, right?
	So if it was only 5% of reduction in the capacity to grow up and reproduce for those who defied their parents, it doesn't take more than a couple of generations for that to be gone from the gene pool.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's like that concept where they killed off 1% of criminals and...
	Yeah, the UK thing over a couple hundred years, right?
	It's a ferociously polite society, right?
	And apparently they miss all of that aggression because they seem to be fixing that pretty quickly.
	So the forgiveness is, fuck them that that was the price of survival.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	That was the price of survival.
	It's just so contemptible that that was the situation foisted upon me.
	It's monstrous.
	Now, you have not done what your parents did.
	Because you as a kid had no authority and they had all the authority.
	That's why...
	The devil who attacks only you is in fact protecting your parents, or rather protecting you from the wrath of your parents.
	Even as an adult, with all the independence that you have, when you tried to confront your mother, she still praised her own parenting.
	As good.
	Right? Yeah.
	Well, that's a very real fact.
	Very real fact.
	So there's no way you could have dislodged.
	The abuse as a child.
	Zero. Zero chance.
	And it would have put you at massive risk.
	And this is what I meant earlier by inoculation.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was going to say, I will say that when I confronted my mother, I felt like, okay, so there's this insight I made.
	So there's this attachment theory where...
	Where it's like the baby needs to attach to the mother in infancy.
	There needs to be some sympathetic nervous system mirroring, like facial...
	Well, if you want empathy, but yeah, yeah, for sure.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And so if that attachment is disruptive, then one of the ways to put a stopgap in that is to...
	Have talk therapy as an adult and the good relationship, good sympathetic marrying relationship that you have with a therapist is a surrogate for the stuff you're missing as an infant.
	But what I found when I confronted my mother is I kind of got the same concept of that but in an opposite form where I was like...
	When I stood there face to face with her, disagreeing with her about how she's wrong about corporal punishment, like I had never done that before.
	And I felt after that there's almost like a change or a transformation in even the way I hold my face in public.
	Well, sure.
	Because if you can't change your mind as an adult, you get that there's no way you could have changed your mind as a kid.
	Yeah. It's sort of like in those movies where the bad guy threatens the good guy with the gun and then the good guy gets the gun and points it at the bad guy.
	And if the bad guy still won't give up his beliefs, even when the good guy has the gun, there's no way that the good guy could ever have talked the bad guy out of his beliefs when the bad guy had the gun.
	So if you confront your parents as an adult with all that independence and they still won't give up their corrupt ideas, it gives you a true and deep sense.
	Of how absolutely helpless you were to change their mind as a child.
	And all you could do was conform and obey.
	Whatever the price of survival was, we will pay it.
	Yeah, that's powerful.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Thank you.
	So you don't blame yourself for what your parents made you do.
	Thank you.
	You feel sorrow at having done it, but that's the price of survival.
	But you don't blame yourself for what other people force you to do.
	I mean, I'm sure that there's things that the government does that you disagree with.
	Are you to blame?
	No, they force you to pay.
	I'm not a huge fan of various wars and conflicts around the world, but some of my money might be going towards that conflict.
	It's like, I'm not blaming myself.
	It's not a voluntary choice.
	I won't take guilt for what others force me to do.
	The guilt is theirs.
	The guilt is theirs.
	Thank you.
	I won't have my self-esteem and self-respect at the mercy of corrupt people, particularly when I had no choice.
	Wow. I just thought of, um, I've been having a lot of dreams lately where I'm in the passenger of a car and the guy driving it crashes.
	Mm-hmm.
	So that totally relates.
	Well, what if he was drunk?
	And you didn't know it.
	What if he was high?
	Because a crash can be an accident.
	No, no, it's not an accident.
	Oh, it wasn't, yeah.
	Because what happened to you as a child was not an accident.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	The people that are driving the car in my dreams are being negligent.
	They're deliberately running over people's crops and deliberately driving on the wrong side of the highway.
	Stuff like this.
	And you can't get out of the car?
	No. You're either strapped in or they've got a gun at you or it's just too fast and you'll die.
	So you've just got to hang on because you are not driving.
	Yeah, there's not even a thought of jumping out.
	Right. So, and you're not even in the passenger seat as a kid, you're in the fucking trunk.
	Can you imagine?
	Like, some guy gets chloroformed and thrown into the trunk of a car, and then some asshole does a hit and run and they charge the guy in the trunk?
	No, that's what the barb was doing.
	You are to blame, though you had no control.
	Yeah, it's a total corruption.
	Well, it's very convenient to abusers that victims blame themselves.
	That way they can continue to enjoy the spectacle of abuse without having to lift a finger.
	Hmm.
	That makes me very angry.
	Just so angry.
	Right. And I'm, you know, not trying to make you angry, but those are the moral facts as I see it.
	Because, you know, the touchy-feely stuff, and it's great, honestly.
	I think it's great that there's all the touchy-feely stuff, and I know it's sort of a slightly contemptuous term, but no, the touchy-feely stuff's really important.
	But for men, the moral anger and, you know, fuck you for what I had to do to survive.
	Wow. Yeah, I was pretty sure heavy on the touchy-feely kind of stuff.
	No, it's the kind of eccentric world we live in, where everyone hopes that tears and hugs will solve everything.
	And they're not bad, you know, no hostility to tears and hugs.
	but in order for a man to feel strong the
	anchor is the testosterone you're welcome to the next episode of the podcast.
	Yeah, that's great stuff.
	Is that, I know we've talked for a long time, is that a good place to, I mean, I think talk therapy is always a good thing, but you know, it might want to be with a guy who's got some balls.
	Yeah, yeah, for sure.
	Yeah, I mean, no, I don't have anything else to add.
	I think this is great.
	I mean, I have such gratitude for you having me on and talking to me, and it's a joy to talk to you, so.
	Well, I appreciate that, and I certainly wish you the very best, and, you know, don't take a sentence that's got someone else's name on it.
	Man, don't do it.
	That's just another form of self-flagellation that it only serves the bad guys.
	All right.
	Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
	Yeah, of course.
	All right.
	Big hug, brother.
	Thanks for a great conversation.
	All right.
	Thanks, Steph.

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